Monday, July 15, 2013

Highlander: The Series 1x07 - Mountain Men

Time for the most entertaining episode in the first half of Season 1. This is partly for the wrong reasons, and this episode isn't exactly great, but My God, is it unintentionally funny at times. It's Deliverance-like in theme. A few episodes back, Richie made a crack about Deliverance, saying that "if somebody starts playing a banjo, I'm outta here". It's obvious that someone on the writing staff liked that movie and wanted to bring some much-neededDeliverance to our favorite series.

Not to be confused with the porn version of the episode, "Mountin' Men".

Richie talks to Tessa and makes crazy faces while telling tales of his days as a rugged mountaineer.

Tessa then goes camping. And NOTHING GOES WRONG.

Yep.

She has a nice, relaxing camping trip, by herself, without any help from Duncan, showing some degree of independence.

Hahaha. No.

Upon arriving in the woods, she is immediately abducted by Mountain Men. Three of them, and they're rugged like a Texas Longhorn. They also sound like extras from Deliverance.

The leader, Caleb, is the burliest of rugged outdoorsmen. You may or may not have already recognized his actor as The Beastmaster. Yep, that is indeed Marc Singer, seen here speaking with a terrible Southern accent. He happens to be an immortal, and within two minutes of meeting Tessa he asks her to marry him. He hasn't seen a woman in a while, you see. Wait, they can't be THAT far from civilization if she just got there and has already run into... oh, whatever.

Another problem with this episode is a problem with many episodes of the show. Tessa goes camping and just happens to run into an immortal bad guy? There aren't THAT many immortals running around. How likely is it that Duncan or the people closest to him would have a problem with one every week, much less run into one in the middle of the wilderness?

And why do all of the evil immortals have names that either start with a K or a hard C?

Duncan returns from rejecting women buying antiques, and Richie informs him that Tessa still isn't back from camping. Duncan immediately takes off to find her. Overprotective much? LET THE WOMAN BE FREE!

This leaves Richie alone in the house to do... whatever it is that Richie does when he's alone.

The sheriff in the woodlands gives Duncan some bad news. "My herpes test... it came back positive."

Duncan is sorry for his loss, but right now he just needs to find his girlfriend.

Seems three killers are on the loose... Well, this isn't good at all.

"And you know what else?" says the sheriff. "I'm gay."

Duncan: "Look, I need to find my girlfriend before anything-"

"That's right, I'm a gay sheriff. I hope this won't be a problem."

Now that he knows roughly where she is, Duncan is going out to find Tessa...alone. As a trained Native American, Duncan knows how to track people in the woodlands. The cops want to go with him, but he tells them that they'll only slow him down. BURN.

So, Duncan sets out to track Tessa, and-

"No, it's because I'm gay, isn't it!? You can't handle having a GAY SHERIFF along can you? Oh yeah, walk away! I hope you can sleep at night with all of that hate in your heart!"

FLASHBACK TIME! We see Duncan battling an immortal in these very woods over a hundred years ago. The immortal in question...

...is the most rugged of all immortals. He is burly like TWO Texas Longhorns. Duncan befriends him, and the guy teaches our hero how to track and live off the land by eating berries and following the moose droppings. This episode just ascended past "rugged" to reach the level of "grizzled".

Back to the present, things have taken a turn for the-

"I see you out there! Having fun with your tracking yet? Huh? YOU try being a gay sheriff in a straight sheriff's world!"

Meanwhile, one of the Mountain Men starts getting all rapey towards Tessa. Unfortunately for The Rapemaster, the mighty ex-Beastmaster Caleb won't let anyone touch her, because he's still on about marrying her. In the woods. Maybe he'll actually ask her for her name at that point, because he hasn't as of yet.

Then HE starts getting rapey, but in a "later after we're married" way. Well, as long as it's as God intended!

Meanwhile, Duncan is stalking through the woods. He stops to eat berries, just to show the audience that he is rugged and outdoorsy. The most important rule of living off the land is something I already know from my days as a grizzled woodsman - red and sweet is good to eat.

Meanwhile, Caleb paws at his giant knife while peering at Tessa. "My preciousssss" he says.

Duncan captures one of Caleb's goons at sword-point. Yep, he brought his katana, and it thirsts for the blood of rednecks.

Unfortunately, The Rapemaster shows up and shoots Duncan, who FALLS OFF A CLIFF TO HIS DEATH. "He sure had a purdy mouth" says TR.

That obviously hurt like hell, as we see Duncan wake up covered in blood and unable to move while his bones heal. While this is happening, you hear his bones cracking. This is some gritty stuff, and we never really see him in a situation like this at any other time in the series.

Now Duncan is PISSED, and goes right back to fight Caleb. He also spends the rest of the episode shirtless, turning this into Baywatch For Women.

In any case, fast-forwarding a bit, Duncan picks off Caleb's goons one-by-one as they wonder what the hell is going on. Didn't this same exact situation just happen one episode ago? Yes. Yes it did.

It's probably the worst line in the entire series, but it's HILARIOUS in the Beastmaster's faux Southern drawl.

A great battle follows, as they trade weapons and have to fight outside of their respective elements. Caleb uses an axe to fight under normal circumstances.

This is an absolutely brutal fight. Duncan may have martial arts skills, but Caleb is psychotic and possesses a killer instinct. He beats the tar out of Duncan for most of the fight.

Duncan rolls backwards and FLIPS CALEB INTO THE POND. This fight is insane.

Caleb comes back and impales Duncan WITH HIS OWN SWORD. MY GOD! HE'S GOT HIM!

BUT WAIT! Duncan "powers through" the pain and takes down Caleb with a massive axe swing.

Fight over. We don't see Caleb get beheaded, because at this point they had stopped showing beheadings (only a couple of episodes had them up to this point).

"THISH! ISH! THE QUICKENING!" said Sean Connery when reached for comment.

Unlike most quickenings... thish ish a quickening for the ladies.

Tessa has, until now, never seen the primal electric surge that we know and love.

She's tough enough that she's remarkably unharmed and unfazed from the whole experience. Duncan looks more traumatized, probably because Caleb absolutely beat the shit out of him.

He doesn't forget to get his katana back at the end.

That was quite the episode. Lots of unintentionally funny Deliverance type stuff, lots of wilderness, the best fight in the show so far...

...and lots of rugged-ness, of course.

This guy was quite the badass. Duncan was actually lucky to survive this fight.

"Have fun finding your girfriend without any help! I guess a GAY SHERIFF just isn't good enough to help YOU, huh? I'm a proud Gay Native American and I don't need to take this kind of treatment! I bet you also have a problem with my herpes! You don't know what it's like! You're no Native American! I'll have you know I was a Native American before you were even born! Oh geez, not again. I need to find a CVS."